According to Delvin, every society has different sense of morality and it just so happens that in the west much of the morality is derived from Christianity. He believes that this is the case even if Christianity is no longer prevalent

How can you be certain some individual action won't harm someone further down the line or that some immediately harmful action won't be beneficial at a later point?

According to him if this shared morality is weakened, it would lead to the destruction of society inevitably and as no society wants to see its own destruction, it would avoid enforcing morals that would cause its own destruction, such as treason is punishable as it threatens society's existence irrespective of the moral opinion held by the indivudual. Delvin in a nutshell believes society is entitled to punish any act which if the shared morality dictates it to be ''grossly immoral''

Would mass immigration by a load of people that are fundamentally opposed to western ethnics be classed as self destruction of society?

There isn't any certainity, but should that stop legislatures from allowing complete freedom to individuals free from restraint which may also be a sure fire way to tell in the future if the action is inevitably harmful or not?

Wilful

Do things we consider and/or know as harmful always lead to bad outcomes in the future? or does it often bring an irreversible change and a new way of thinking?

Yes, that's why I say Scottish people should not be allowed out of Scotland

If freedom is key, and restraint should not be used against most individual liberty as long as it harms no one, where does this leave children or ''primitive peoples''? Does that mean we can dictate our own moral opinion on children and they can be subject to biased education in schools where they are taught racism? What about self-harm? If I get myself injured through drugs or drinking or driving without a seatbelt, do I not harm others by imposing cost on society's medical service, maybe depriving my dependents of support and the taxman of revenue? Can law on this basis then not prohiibit dangerous activities like mountaineering too then also?

Reminds me of that quote from Charlie Wilson's War.

On his sixteenth birthday the boy gets a horse as a present. All of the people in the village say, ''Oh, how wonderful!''

The Zen master says, ''We'll see.''

One day, the boy is riding and gets thrown off the horse and hurts his leg. He's no longer able to walk, so all of the villagers say, ''How terrible!''

The Zen master says, ''We'll see.''

Some time passes and the village goes to war. All of the other young men get sent off to fight, but this boy can't fight because his leg is messed up. All of the villagers say, ''How wonderful!''

The Zen master says, ''We'll see.''

Does that mean we can dictate our own moral opinion on children and they can be subject to biased education in schools where they are taught racism? What about self-harm?

both of these are taught in schools across the uk, including schools providing self harm rooms and blades to self harm with.

Would you live in Millhart land or Delvin land? in both the states, eating pork is considered wrong by a majority of people, and theft is sanctioned by the state. In Millhart land, eating pork is free from any sanctions by the simple reason that, ''eating pork and shoplifting are wrong, but we don't punish the former because it does not harm anyone other than the actor who consumed it'' Delvinland would then say, ''We punish all transgressions of morality, both pork-eating and shoplifting, if we allow people to choose, save where harm will happen, who is to say someone won't take the view that shop-lifting causes no harm? freedom is important, but standards must also be upheld''

Who's right?

Beautiful!

In Millhart's land it would be impossible for the state to advocate theft as it is an objective fact that it causes harm and that goes against the founding philosophy. The state could choose not to intervene and prosecute but they couldn't advocate it.

I just read the article, that's bizarre and crazy.

Millhart land is the easy choice.

oh that is not the real crazy stuff, i will save that for another topic

Natural law is another interesting way of seeing things. Thomas Aquinius who was an Aristotelian philsopher who catholicized the work of Aristotle and came up with the following notions, ''God created everything with a purpose'' starting with the eternal law which governs all physical laws of this universe, followed by the divine law set by the church needed to get into heaven, which is followed Natural law which is the aspect of eternal law that humans can grasp by way of reason, and finally the positive law which is the law pormulgated by the government or those in charge.

so essentially man is a socio-political animal living with other socio- political animals, and through human reasoning, he grasps natural law which basically is a part of eternal law and contains principles and guidelines that guide individuals towards a common goal, and that is heaven. Sounds crazy? stay with me. He thinks as much as humans are capable of rationalization, many are either unwilling or incapable of deducing natural law and hence positive law plays a role under which government officials promulgate laws guiding humans towards reaching that common goal. Reasoning further gives us a general framework, we have an idea how the house we want to build looks like, but law then specifies it, allows it to manifest all the while deriving this from natural law.

Here is a question, should one ought to do something because it is? for etc if you say yes, one ought to eat vegetables because they are healthy, you're comitting a naturalistic fallacy. And yet saying vegetables are healthy is a factual statement.